Los Angeles – Justin Wong, an aerospace engineering student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was schmoozing on Facebook.com last fall when he came across a sleek Boeing job ad.
Wong, who had just interned at the aerospace company, saw the banner on the popular social networking site as a “two-way street” – a defense behemoth reaching out to today’s youth in their virtual playground.
“My first impression was that Boeing is getting with the times,” said the 21-year-old senior, who will work at Boeing’s satellite division after graduation. “It shows the company is making an effort to talk to us on our level.”
It’s no secret the U.S. aerospace industry is rapidly graying: The average age of an aerospace worker was 45 in 2005. By next year, roughly one out of four will be eligible to retire.
Faced with a looming brain drain, companies are cooking up creative ways to lure and keep talent, from chatting with students online to fast-tracking young workers to be future leaders.
Industry analysts say there’s still time to stave off a shortage – if the effort begins now.
“The workforce isn’t going to suddenly disappear,” said Jeremiah Gertler, assistant vice president of the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group. “We actually have enough time to start building up the folks for the future.”
For years, recruiters flooded college campuses, promoting internships, setting up luncheons and handing out leaflets at job fairs. While many aerospace and defense companies still consider face-to-face contact their best weapon, more are experimenting with virtual connections.
For example, the Boeing Co. last year advertised a contest on Facebook to win an iPod Nano or iTunes gift card. Facebook users who entered the sweepstakes listened to a short video and answered a multiple-choice quiz. The company then followed up with job openings.
Boeing also uses Facebook to keep in touch with workers hired through traditional channels. Interns who will work at the company’s Southern California plants this summer were invited to join a Facebook group created by Rob Papandrea, a 28-year-old former Boeing engineer turned college recruiter.
Interns are valuable because many land full-time jobs after their gigs. Recruiters are increasingly going out of their way to make interns feel welcome in a corporate environment, and that sometimes means speaking their language – on the Internet.
“We’ve got to go to their turf,” Papandrea said.
It works both ways. Papandrea said he often gets random messages on Facebook and other networking sites from young engineers interested in Boeing.
The Boeing intern group, with 127 members, has been messaging one another with a simple “hi” or questions about housing and other topics. The page even lists an invitation to a mixer later this month before summer internships start.
“It’ll be a lot easier to break the ice and socialize,” said intern Senad Basic, a 22-year-old computer science student at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The aerospace sector – loosely made up of people who design and develop aircraft, spacecraft, missiles and engine systems – was flush with engineers during the Cold War. Workers from that era still make up the heart of today’s workforce.
The industry took a nosedive in the 1990s. Military spending cuts forced businesses to downsize or merge to stay afloat. Many young engineers fled to dot-coms and other tech startups.
There were 630,000 aerospace workers last year, compared with 1.1 million in 1990. The ranks of workers 25 to 34 years old plunged from 27 percent in 1992 to 15 percent in 2005, according to the aerospace association.
With fewer students interested in engineering, many wonder whether defense contractors can attract enough skilled workers to replace retiring baby boomers.
Other industries facing a talent shortage can easily outsource jobs overseas. But defense contractors have a harder time hiring non-citizens because of national security clearances and government restrictions on technology transfer.
